As illustrated in FIG. 1, a known Rack Interface Pod (RIP) 100 (e.g., as described in the above-referenced applications) can be provided for receiving video signals from a server computer 120, such as a rack-mounted server, and providing the video signals to a remote user at a remote computer 190 via (among possibly other things) a local area network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN) 195. The analog signals received by the RIP 100 from the server 120 are transmitted to Avocent Rack Interconnect (ARI) ports on a Rack Connection Manager (RCM) 160 either directly or via a Pod Extension Module (PEM) 140. The RCM 160 includes video processing logic, a supervisory processor, a KVM switch system, and Ethernet interface circuitry.
The remote user of the remote computer 190 connected to the LAN/WAN 195 has the capability of selecting a particular network server (e.g., 120b) among the plurality of network servers (120a . . . 120n) through the PEM 140. The remote user is also capable of selecting a particular network server (e.g., 120o, 120p or 120q) that is directly connected to an ARI-port of the RCM 160. A portion of the circuitry located within the RCM 160 digitizes the KVM signals from a selected network server and forwards the digitized signals to the remote user via the LAN/WAN 195 (optionally through an analog Internet Protocol Video (IPV) Module 180). Likewise, the remote users' keyboard strokes and mouse movements are passed via the LAN/WAN 195 to the processor of the RCM 160 which in-turn passes the signals to the selected network server via (1) PEM 140 in the event the network server is connected to the PEM 140 or (2) directly via an ARI (e.g., in the case of servers 120o, 120p and 120q).
In addition to other possible communications capabilities, such as Ethernet-based and serial-based communication, in servers 120, there now exist a series of control and/or status interfaces known as IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface), such as is detailed in a document entitled “IPMI v2.0 rev 1.0 specification markup for IPMI v2.0/v1.5 errata revision 2.” The contents of that document are incorporated herein by reference. The IPMB (Intelligent Platform Management Bus), and ICMB (Intelligent Chassis Management Bus) are also part of the same information. Intel and other manufacturers recently adopted IPMI v2.0 and 1.5, and information about those standards are now publicly available on the Internet.